Do the work, and it will come...

Today I had a training session in Centennial Park.

It was what I call TTIs (threshold tolerance intervals), which were done as two 20-min efforts, with about a 5-min easy riding in between each effort. They are very hard going, ridden at time trial pace. I've written about these plenty before and I've been doing a block of them lately.

As many of you know, I use a power meter on my bike to help monitor my effort as well as record my performance. I've been doing this for many years.

My average power for each TTI today was 314 watts & 313 watts respectively.

That exceeds my all time previous best 2x20-min TTIs (313W & 310W) in January-2007.

That's two years six months after my amputation and one year five months after I attempted to ride for the first time on an indoor trainer (10-min at 100W).

Do the work, and you will improve. Even if you are missing a bit of leg.

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Granfondo 2009

The countryside surrounding Santa Rosa, California:


In early October 2009 I participated in Levi's King Ridge Granfondo.

It was the finale to a week long visit to Santa Rosa, California.

It was a great week of riding and the weather was excellent! Being a city bound lad, the ability to ride for just a few minutes from home and find yourself on country roads winding through the vineyards was fabulous!

I am especially grateful to my very generous hosts, the Palladino clan. Steve, Sharon and Shannon went out of their way to make me feel very welcome, and Steve not only loaned me a bike for the week but also took me out for some great training rides in the week leading up to the Granfondo. What a great place to live and train!

A couple of pictures:

Out training in the days before:


On the morning of the Granfondo, Steve, Sharon & Shannon hosted a Team Boba breakfast, with Shannon cooking pankakes. Yumm!! They were gooood.


I was an honourary "Fightin' Boba" for the day and wore the team kit:

Here's Steve enjoying the ride along with some of the Boba crew:

The roads had some pretty steep sections at times and I saw signs like this indicating an 18% gradient a few times along the way:


Of course going down also means going up, here I am with Steve making my way up the final major climb of the day from Coleman Valley:

One of the funnier moments was on this climb when a few riders were passing a cyclist who was off his bike, hunched over and leaning on the top tube of his bike, no doubt wondering how he was going to be able to continue.

As we were approaching him, another rider started yelling in that uniquely enthusiastic American way "Come on buddy, don't stop now, you can do it, c'mon!! C'mon, get back on!!"

To which the reply from the hunched over rider was, "Shut up, I'm praying!" No doubt he was!

And here are some shots of the scenery encountered along the way:

I also managed a close up view of the redwoods with a little off road excursion when I overcooked it a little on one steep winding descent (and didn't quite have the emergency braking finesse I am used to as the brakes on Steve's bike, while very good, are opposite handed to what I normally ride). It was funny enough and no harm done to me, the bike or the local flora and fauna. Climb back up to the road, dust myself off and get going again. Last time I did something like that was about 25 years ago on a motorbike.

Anyone for lemonade?


The ride itself is pretty challenging, a 103 mile (166km) ride with ~ 9,000 feet (~3000m) of climbing. The more difficult sections were an average gradient ~ 10%.

Ride stats for the Granfondo:

Duration: _______ 6:04:27 (6:29:27)
Work: _________ 3882 kJ
TSS: __________ 389.4
Intensity factor: __ 0.802
Average Power: __ 178 watts
Normalised Power: 224 watts

All up, a great week. I can certainly recommend it!!

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Yowser!!!

Training continues apace. No easing up for me following World Masters Track Champs. None of this rest up for a month crap between seasons.

So with some good ol' fashioned solid endurance work during the week, today I was back to doing an old favourite workout, 2 x 20-minute threshold tolerance intervals (TTIs).

I've written about these before. Really top notch hard efforts designed to boost your power at threshold, which is the single most important physiological factor for success in endurance cycling.

Click here to read more.

Last time I did regular TTIs, was in October & November 2006, about six months before my accident. I've done a few as well since of course but it is interesting to note my progress relative to pre-accident levels.

In October & November 2006, my TTI power on road bike was consistently 295-300 watts. And in fact back then I was doing mostly 2 x 15-minute efforts rather than 2 x 20-min efforts.

In the above linked post, I note I also did a 2 x 20-minute TTIs with average power of 313W & 310W. That was January 2007, when I was right into some good form, had won an open crit and was cranking along nicely leading up to State & National Masters track champs (where I set some PBs). I note my comments at the time were that that was a "breakthrough workout" for me.

So how was today's effort? Well here a pic of the file (well the bit with the TTIs, I chopped off the commute to/from my training course).


That, my good readers, is 2 x 20-min TTIs with power averages of 306W and 307W respectively. OK, them's SRM watts versus Powertap watts, so a couple of percent for drive train differences, but still, that I gotta admit is pretty darn remarkable.

So it puts me at roughly 95-98% of pre-accident TT power.

And I'm only just gettin' started.....

Yowser!!

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Legs on fire!

Well, sort of.

At least that's how it felt racing last night at the Central Coast Track Open. It's been a few years since I've raced this carnival (for obvious reasons), that the ever energised Paul Craft of RAW Track fame organises. It's always been a favourite - all the good stuff you get from a country track carnival without having to travel too far - it's about a 90-minute drive from my place.

When I say good stuff, I mean you get value for money races. Lots of events, something for everyone and the usual Crafty entertainment value. Shame you can't say that for many of the events hosted in the city.

I went up early this year as they were desperately seeking extra commissaires for the junior carnival which was being held in the afternoon before the senior carnival. So I spent the afternoon checking junior gear rollouts and standing (sometimes sitting) in the sun making sure all the little tikes behaved themselves out there on the track. It's fun watching 'em go round.

Once that was over I pulled on the Bicisport skinsuit, pumped up the tyres and got out on the track for my warmup. Looking at the program I had been given a mark of 195 metres, which put me at the top of the C grade field. I think in days gone past I'd be closer to the 90-110 metre mark and in the B grade group.

For those not familar with what I mean, in Australia we have a form of track racing called a "Wheelrace". Riders line up on the track at their designated handicap mark, the gun/whistle goes and the winner is first past the post after a designated number of laps. So in theory all riders have a chance to win since the fastest riders have to complete a greater distance. The rider(s) off zero metres is/are called the "scratch" marker(s). So in this example, when I race the wheelrace I start 195 metres in front of the "scratchies".

Now what also happens is you can't have everyone who's racing the carnival on the track at the same time, so heats are run to determine who qualifies for the wheelrace final. There are many ways to do this so I won't bore you with the details.

Just before that race was the opening scratch race, which I came second in after a bit of collusion between two Bathurst riders prevented a fair sprint - with one deliberately blocking me for his mate (the winner also qualified for the wheelrace final). Collusion is not legal in track racing but the comms didn't pick that one up. Generally doing things like working hard to pull a mate along is OK but deliberately blocking another rider is a BIG NO NO - you must contest the sprint. I had a seriously good lunge at the line despite only getting to poke my nose out at the very last second. Damn I thought, the legs felt GREAT!!

Wheelrace heats were run as graded wheelraces and in my heat I was the next to last marker but I won my heat (and a few $ for my effort) by passing all riders in front of me. I think the extra motivation from the scratch race finish spurred me on this time. And good legs.

After the scratch race and wheelrace heat, there were Kierin heats, which I placed 2nd in to qualify for the final (three went through to final).

Then we had one of Crafty's special races, the "miss n out handicap". Simple race, riders roll out and every lap the last rider across the line is eliminated, except that in this case the A, B & C grades start at different points on the track. So in the opening laps a few A graders get eliminated early until they catch B and/or C grade. Once it comes together it reverts to a standard miss n out. Our race came together reasonably early so I did what I always do and be attentive to position in the bunch while other (often much stronger/fitter) riders get eliminated behind. In the end I was 4th last rider eliminated, with the remaining riders being the A grade road runner dudes. Once again, nice work legs.

Right after that was the Kierin final! I came second by about a wheel. And a few more $. Petrol money really.

Then the Wheelrace final. That wasn't so good as I had a slight mishap with my cleat off the start, which cost me too much distance to the riders in front and I couldn't make it up, so I retired gracefully and called it a night.

So six races with one win, three seconds, two finals and a 5th in the miss n out. And a few $ for my efforts.

On fire!!

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WTF is happening??

Ok, it's been a while and posting lately has been slow.

That's actually a good thing - I've just been really busy. I have lots to update on, so I'll get to it all. Eventually, LOL.

I had a fantastic trip to California to ride the countryside around Santa Rosa, participate in Levi's Granfondo and also deliver a seminar on training with power. So I'll get to those in separate posts later.

I also have been doing lots of training leading up to the UCI World Masters Track championships which were held last week. I had a really good championships, riding a good pursuit time and making the finals of both the scratch and points races. More on that later too.

Here I am am up front and personal during my Individual Pursuit last week:


I rode a 3:54 3km pursuit, which is about 6-7 seconds slower than my all time PB but it's still my 3rd fastest time ever. My average power was 375 watts.

Also, as part of the training I did some aerodynamic field testing, mostly for wheel choices, so I'll report on that too!

And some cool stuff on the coaching front as well..... like I said, I have been busy.

Ahead I have a really solid block of training in front of me as I prepare for the Track nationals in early February in Adelaide.

And more cycling performance experiments to perform.

And to finally finish off the leg - with an aero fairing.....

Also I go to Adelaide in late-November for a week long Cycling Australia coaching development course.

Stay tuned folks!!

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Testing is Training....

One of the Pithy Power Proverbs is "Training is testing, testing is training." by Andy Coggan. It's really a way of saying that one shouldn't be afraid of "mucking up their training" in order to schedule a performance test, since by their very nature, tests are very high quality training efforts anyway.

Many think that one needs to taper or rest up significantly for such tests and that's what "mucks up your training". Well yes and no. A lot depends on where you are at in your training.

Certainly at lower Chronic Training Levels (less than ~70-80 TSS/day), then a significant rest up really isn't necessary. Sure, don't go and smash yourself the day before hand but not too much more concern should be had with resting up. At high CTLs then perhaps a little more recovery time is in order before tests.

So over the past couple of weeks I have been doing some testing. Coach Ric figured it was time we checked under the hood to see whether I was running a 2 pot screamer, a Wankel rotary, a turbo 4, the family 6 or a big donk of a V8.

Before I get to how that panned out, here's a quick summary of my training over the past 7.5 weeks in the form of a Performance Manager Chart:


You can see that following a break after the National (Apr-09) and Oceania (May-09) Paralympic road race championships, my CTL had fallen significantly (was at ~ 70 CTL at time of the champs). I had expected it to drop a bit as I was taking a week off and then some easy riding but a series of events led to quite a long interruption to my training of about 8 weeks. Initially I had problems with my new walking prosthetic and after that was finally sorted and I rode again for a couple of weeks, I took then ill for a while with some weirdo viral bug. So CTL dropped to ~ 32 TSS/day with lots of time off the bike.

OK, so once I was healthy enough to train and had my prosthetic sorted, it was time to ramp it back up again. In the period leading up to testing my CTL was rising at a little over 6 TSS/day per week, which you can see by that steady upward march of the blue CTL line in the chart above.

So after that five week block of training, I had a week with a 16km time trial (TT) scheduled for a Tuesday and a Maximal Aerobic Power (MAP) test on the Thursday. Those days are shown on the chart above.

Here's the power trace from the 16km TT:


Well it's actually a bit shorter than 16km at 15.3km. Four laps of Sydney's Centennial Park (a gradually undulating course) but it's close enough for the purpose and is a testing ground I have used many times. I did the TT on my road bike (no TT rig at the moment).

299 watts for 24:29 (37.4 km/h)
Peak 20-min: 301W
CTL: 69
TSB: -31

That's 92% of my pre-injury PB power (326W) on the same course.

Testing Part II was the MAP test on the Thursday. Here's the result:

MAP is the maximal 1-minute average power from a ramp test to exhaustion using a ramp rate of 20 or 25W/min (depending on category of rider). I use a 25W/min ramp protocol.

MAP: 410 watts
CTL: 70.6 TSS/day
TSB: -25.2

That's an all time PB MAP result for me and is 103% of my pre-injury PB (399W).

Note the Training Stress Balance (TSB) at the time of both tests - both what I would call significantly negative (meaning I was quite fatigued), yet I still produced post-accident PB power levels and in the case of my MAP, well I'm a little astounded at setting an all time best just 14 months after I tried to pedal on a bike again for the first time since my accident.

So astounded was I on the day that I decided to make a special effort to re-check the slope calibration of the SRM power meter on my ergo bike. It was slightly off and my numbers were lowered by 4W (initially I had 414W).

Here's a look at my previous MAP test results over the past two and a bit years. Also marked are the months where I had my accident and amputation, as well as when I started back on the home trainer:


One can wonder - was I fully developed as an athlete beforehand? Has that skewed the results?

Well probably not fully developed (I sure had plans of becoming more powerful), but I wasn't un- or under-developed either. I had an FTP well over 300W and a CTL of the order of 100 TSS/day. Up to that point I had attained podium in 6 team pursuit championships including a championship win in state record time, 1 x podium at teams time trial championships, 1 x podium at criterium championships as well as an open criterium win, and a podium at the national masters track points race champsionships (right before my accident).

Now I don't know what specific conclusions you can draw from this n=1 study, but as an athlete who has severals years of power meter data prior to and after a lower leg amputation I think it will no doubt be of interest to those who study the performance implications for such injuries and the use of prosthetics in cycling. Clearly there are many high performing athletes using similar prosthetics.


One outcome of testing is to establish or validate an estimate for Functional Threshold (~1-hour TT) Power (FTP) . On the basis of these tests (the TT in particular and my recent longer threshold tolerance intervals), I have reset my FTP to 280 watts as of the day of the TT. It was previously set at 270 watts.

So what now? Well one thing to note is the ratio of FTP to MAP.

Currently that puts me at a ratio of 280W / 410W = 68%
My previous best pre-injury I was 315W / 399W = 79%

That's quite a remarkable difference in the ratios and I'm not entirely sure of the reason.

Typically the ratio of FTP to MAP is in the range of 72% - 77%, so on both accounts I fall outside the typical range (it happens). Pre-accident I was always somewhere around the upper end of the range. Everyone's ratio is different and can vary through the course of training and be due to your physiological and power profile (anaerobic capacity, VO2max, % of VO2max one can sustain at threshold and so on).

One way to think of it is MAP is like your aerobic ceiling* and FTP is how close to that ceiling you are able to get when riding a TT. So in this sense, it suggests that my roof is plenty high and that I have lots of room to further improve my TT power before I starting bumping my head. Which is good!

* of course there is an anaerobic component to MAP as well (as indeed there is in shorter TTs albeit a smaller overall contributor to total energy output) but examination of hundreds, if not thousands, of MAP tests have shown it to be a reliable indicator of aerobic performance potential.

My testing isn't actually finished. Since I will be targeting the 3km and 4km individual pursuit (and track TT 750m and kilometre) over the next 6 months we have also scheduled a trial 3km pursuit effort for this coming week. That'll be fun.

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No news is good news

Yep, been a little busy of late so not so many posts.

A quick one for the record....

After the National and Oceania championships, I had a bit of time off the bike, which I wanted. A week was the idea, followed by some leisurely riding for a while. Best laid plans....

Then that became a lot of time off because I had trouble adapting to a new prosthetic. Took a while to sort it but it got sorted.

So a few weeks later I started training again and not long after caught some rotten lurgy, which coincidentally also made my leg swell up and I couldn't wear my prosthetic. So another 2 weeks of very little on the training front.

Never mind, get healthy first, train second. Well I've now had a really good few weeks back on the steed and the Performance Manager Chart shows clearly the impact to training loads of two longish periods of time off the bike. The blue CTL line looks like one of those Tour de France mountain stage course profiles.


This week, even after such a short time training again, I did 2x20-minute threshold tolerance efforts at 275+ watts in the park, which is already at a level I was prior to the championships.

My progression on these 2x20-min TTIs since starting back on the bike last year went something like:

Sep 08: 220W
Oct 08: 230W to 240W
Nov 08: 245W
Dec 08: 250W to 260W to 265W
Jan 09: 265W
Feb 09: 265W to 270W
Apr 09: 275W to 280W


And now, after these interruptions to training, I go and bang out 275+W with a little still in the tank.

So now the goal is 290W in ~ 5-6 weeks. Let's see, eh?

Oh, and keeping training in a consistent manner which will see that blue line rising for some time yet.

Next week I start track racing again - the RAW Track series, at which I have been Commissaire for so far this year (and all last season). So it will be fun to ditch the comm's jacket and pull on the skinsuit. Should be a hoot. RST is also a sponsor of RAW Track and RAW Track have supported me greatly in helping to raise money for my bike leg.

As for the bike leg, it is partly completed. I am using it and have been getting all the angles etc tweaked but waiting for one special component (a cleat adapter plate) to be finished by a machine shop friend (I'm currently using an adapter good buddy Peter Barnard made for me last year), so I can hook up the new pylon/clamp I have waiting, finalise the position (lengths and various angles) and then get the aerofoil section completed.

When done we'll make a small run of the adapter plates for future use. Its design will make cleat removal/replacement a lot easier and will be a bit more stream lined and light weight than the one I have at the moment.

It will be one funky looking aero leg when done....

Have also been very busy with coaching things, lots happening on that front but more on that later. One cool thing coming up will be a trip to Northern California at end September, where I'll get to hang, ride, deliver a seminar on training with power and participate in Levi Leipheimer's Granfondo on 3 October. Can't wait!

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